If there’s one thing that rivals how much antivaccinationists detest being called “antivaccine,” it’s being called antiscience. To try to deny that they are antiscience, they will frequently invoke ridiculous analogies such as claiming that being for better car safety does not make one “anti-car” and the like. It is here that the Dunning-Kruger effect comes to the fore, wherein antivaccine activists think that they understand as much or more than actual scientists because of their education and self-taught Google University courses on vaccines, that their pronouncements on vaccines should be taken seriously. If there are two antivaccine blogs that epitomize the Dunning-Kruger effect, they are Age of Autism and, of course, the most hilariously inappropriately named given her history, but nonetheless it’s worth taking a look at her latest post, Anti-science: “You Keep Using That Word. I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means.”
Actually, it does. And if The Professor is going to spend nearly 7,000 words riffing on a title derived from a famous The Princess Bride quote, my retort can only be: “Science. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Not surprisingly, “The Professor” feels compelled to begin by asserting her alleged science bona fides. Describing herself as a “geeky physics major” who nonetheless has the temerity to “question” vaccine science, she declares herself “irritated enough by this journalistic trend to rebut to the popular conception of those who question vaccine science as ‘anti-science.'” What appears to have particularly irritated her and sparked this screed is a rather good article by Joel Achenbach from the March issue of National Geographic entitled Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science? “The Professor” is particularly incensed by a passage in the article in which Achenbach makes the case that people who “doubt science” are, as she puts it, “driven by emotion.” Of course, that’s not exactly the argument that Achenbach does make. His argument, as you will see if you read his article, is considerably more nuanced than that. Rather, Achenbach points out observations that have been discussed here time and time again, such as how the scientific method sometimes leads to findings that are “less than self-evident, often mind-blowing, and sometimes hard to swallow,” citing Galileo and Charles Darwin as two prominent examples of this phenomenon, as well as modern resistance to climate science that concludes that human beings are significantly changing the climate through our production of CO2. Not surprisingly, Darwin’s theory is still doubted by many today based not on evidence but rather on its conflict with deeply held fundamentalist religious beliefs.

Achenbach also makes this point:

Even when we intellectually accept these precepts of science, we subconsciously cling to our intuitions—what researchers call our naive beliefs. A recent study by Andrew Shtulman of Occidental College showed that even students with an advanced science education had a hitch in their mental gait when asked to affirm or deny that humans are descended from sea animals or that Earth goes around the sun. Both truths are counterintuitive. The students, even those who correctly marked “true,” were slower to answer those questions than questions about whether humans are descended from tree-dwelling creatures (also true but easier to grasp) or whether the moon goes around the Earth (also true but intuitive). Shtulman’s research indicates that as we become scientifically literate, we repress our naive beliefs but never eliminate them entirely. They lurk in our brains, chirping at us as we try to make sense of the world.

Most of us do that by relying on personal experience and anecdotes, on stories rather than statistics. We might get a prostate-specific antigen test, even though it’s no longer generally recommended, because it caught a close friend’s cancer—and we pay less attention to statistical evidence, painstakingly compiled through multiple studies, showing that the test rarely saves lives but triggers many unnecessary surgeries. Or we hear about a cluster of cancer cases in a town with a hazardous waste dump, and we assume pollution caused the cancers. Yet just because two things happened together doesn’t mean one caused the other, and just because events are clustered doesn’t mean they’re not still random.

We have trouble digesting randomness; our brains crave pattern and meaning. Science warns us, however, that we can deceive ourselves. To be confident there’s a causal connection between the dump and the cancers, you need statistical analysis showing that there are many more cancers than would be expected randomly, evidence that the victims were exposed to chemicals from the dump, and evidence that the chemicals really can cause cancer.

This, of course, is an excellent description of antivaccinationists, except that they no longer accept the precepts of science with respect to vaccines but cling to their “naive beliefs.” They rely on personal experience and anecdotes rather than statistics with respect to the question of whether vaccines cause autism, and no amount of science, seemingly, can persuade them otherwise. The Professor herself is a perfect example of this. She believes herself to be “pro-science” and so she is when science tells her what she wants to believe. When it does not, as in the case of vaccines and autism, she rejects it, spreading her disdain from just vaccine science to all of science. Indeed, her entire post is in general a long diatribe, even more than Orac-ian in length, consisting mainly of three key arguments: the “science was wrong before” trope; the “peer review is shit” trope; and the “pharma shill” gambit.

Achenbach notes that even for scientists the scientific method is a “hard discipline.” And so it is, because, after all, scientists are no less human than any other human being. The only difference between us and the rest of humanity is that we are trained and have made a conscious effort to understand the issues discussed above. We know how easy it is to confuse correlation with causation, to exhibit confirmation bias wherein we tend to remember things that support our world view and forget things that do not, and to let wishful thinking bias us. Even knowing all of that, not infrequently we fall prey to the same errors in thinking that any other human being does. Nowhere is this more true than when we wander outside of our own field, as the inaptly named Professor does when she leaves the world of physics and discusses vaccines or when, for example, a climate scientist discusses vaccines.

The hilarity begins when The Professor cites philosopher Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Even more hilariously, The Professor quotes extensively from the Wikipedia entry on Kuhn’s book, rather than from Kuhn himself. Kuhn’s main idea was that science doesn’t progress by the gradual accretion of knowledge but tends to be episodic in nature. According to Kuhn, observations challenging the existing “paradigm” in a field gradually accumulate until the paradigm itself can no longer stand, at which point a new paradigm is formed that completely replaces the old. Kuhn’s view of science is a fascinating topic in and of itself and I haven’t read that book in many years. However, most scientists tend to dismiss many of Kuhn’s views for several reasons, in particular because Kuhn tends to vastly exaggerate the concept of “paradigm shift.” Particularly galling is his concept of “normal science,” where in the interregnum between scientific revolutions he portrays scientists doing “normal science” (science that is not paradigm-changing) as essentially dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s of the previous revolution. (It’s a very dismissive attitude toward what the vast majority of scientists do.) Indeed, Kuhn’s characterization of the history of science has been referred to as a caricature, and I tend to agree. Certainly, at the very least he exaggerates how completely new paradigms place the old, when in reality when new theories supplant old theories the new must completely encompass the old and explain everything the old did plus the new observations that the old theory cannot. As Cormac O’Rafferty puts it, “The new can only replace the old if it explains all the old did, plus a whole lot more (because as new evidence is uncovered, old evidence also remains).” The best example for this idea that I like to cite is Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, which did not replace Newtonian physics, but rather expanded on Newtonian physics, which is what relativity simplifies down to when applied to velocities that are such a small fraction of the speed of light that relativistic contributions drop out of the equations because they are so close to zero that it is reasonable to approximate them as zero.

None of these nuances are for The Professor. She misuses and abuses Kuhn to construct a “science was wrong before” argument that is truly risible:

It would seem likely that a journalist writing a high-profile article on science for National Geographic would not only be aware of Kuhn’s work, but would also understand it well. Achenbach seems to understand the evolution of science as inherently provisional and subject to change when new information comes in, but then undercuts that understanding with the claim, “The media would also have you believe that science is full of shocking discoveries made by lone geniuses. Not so. The (boring) truth is that it usually advances incrementally, through the steady accretion of data and insights gathered by many people over many years.”

This statement is patently false. First off, the mainstream media tends to downplay, if not completely ignore, any contributions of “lone geniuses” to science, as exemplified by the 2014 Time magazine cover story proclaiming “Eat Butter! Scientists labeled fat the enemy. Why they were wrong.” Suddenly, everyone was reporting that consumption of fat, in general, and saturated fat, in particular, is not the cause of high serum cholesterol levels and is not in fact bad for you. “Lone geniuses” (also known as “quacks” in the parlance of the old paradigm) understood and accepted these facts 25-30 years ago and have been operating under a completely different paradigm ever since, but it wasn’t until 2014 that a tipping point occurred in mainstream medical circles and the mainstream media finally took note.

Um. No. This change, which arguably The Professor vastly overstates, came about through the very accretion of knowledge. Moreover, as much as I castigate David Katz for his nonsense on other issues (such as his embrace of homeopathy “for the good of the patient”), he did get it (mostly) right when he criticized this ridiculous TIME magazine article for many shortcomings and exaggerations, not the least of which is that there never was a “war on dietary fat” and the seeming attitude that it’s OK to eat all the fat you want now. In any case, this is not the “paradigm shift” that The Professor seems to think it is. Rather it was a correction, which is what science does. The process is often messy, but science does correct itself with time.

Next up, of course, is an attack on peer review, something without which no antivaccine article is complete. Of course, criticism of the peer review process is something many scientists engage in. As I like to paraphrase Winston Churchill quoting a saying about democracy, “It has been said that peer review is the worst way to decide which science is published and funded except all the others that have been tried.” Yes, the peer review process is flawed. However, as is the case with attacks on the very concept of a scientific consensus, when you see general attacks on the concept of peer review, it’s usually a pretty good indication that you’re dealing with a crank. There is little doubt that The Professor is a crank. Naturally, she can’t resist including a section that is nothing more than a big pharma shill argument claiming that the science showing that vaccines are safe and effective must be doubted because everyone’s in the pocket of big pharma. No antivaccine article is complete without a variant of that tired old trope.

The ability to “utilize this subtlety and context to make important distinctions” that Herbert describes constitutes the difference between the scientific revolutionaries and those who will continue defending an error until long past the point that it has been well and truly proven to be an error. It is an ability that Albert Einstein possessed to a larger degree than most. Einstein felt that “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.” And that “All great achievements of science must start from intuitive knowledge. I believe in intuition and inspiration . . . . At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason.” Interestingly, another well-known scientist whom many consider to have been “revolutionary” was known to place a great deal of emphasis on intuition. Jonas Salk, the creator of the first inactivated polio vaccine to be licensed, even wrote a book called Anatomy of Reality: Merging Intuition and Reason.

Of course, the problem that The Professor overlooks is that in science intuition is nothing if it doesn’t lead to results that are supported by data. Moreover, I would argue that what we have here in those who fetishize “intuition” in science is a massive case of that most human of failures of reason: Confirmation bias. We as scientists remember the times when our intuition ended up being validated and forget the almost certainly much more numerous times when our intuition either led nowhere or even led us astray. Yes, even Albert Einstein and Jonas Salk. Indeed, when called out by a commenter for most likely exhibiting confirmation bias about intuition in science and having it pointed out to her that intuition must never trump data, The Professor proves me right:

Confirmation bias on my part, huh? I have to say that that is absolutely untrue. It took me quite a long time to honor and rely on my intuition, and despite the fact that it is proven right over and over again, I STILL sometimes let my conscious mind override it to my regret. I didn’t understand intuition at all when I was younger and thought “hunches” were silly. In all that time, I have virtually never heard anyone say that “I really regret following my intuition on that, while I have frequently heard the latter — often from parents who have lost their children.

No one is saying “I don’t care what the data says.” I have NEVER said that. I read the data. I analyze the data. And I know it DOESN’T say what the mainstream media says it says — ever noticed that you can’t watch a show on TV these days without a few ads for drugs? I’ve read many of those “studies that show vaccines are safe” and I know their limitations — and they are vast. So, nope. Sorry.

So, first The Professor paints herself as a reluctant convert to trusting her intuition. If we’re going to play a war of anecdotes, I could list quite a number of times when I “trusted my intuition” and later regretted it. Her argument here is the very essence of confirmation bias. She remembers the times her intuition led her where she wanted to go, as well as the times she didn’t listen to her intuition and things didn’t turn out well, and forgets the rest. Then, basically, The Professor foes on to rationalize her relying on her “intuition” over data with respect to vaccines and autism by eliminating that cognitive dissonance. She does that by convincing herself that she doesn’t let her “intuition” trump the data in the case of vaccines because she doesn’t think the data show what scientists think the data show, namely that vaccines are safe and effective, do not cause autism, do not harm the immune system, and do not cause all the evils that Dunning-Kruger poster children like The Professor think they do.

Demonstrating her even more inept understanding of epidemiology and medicine, The Professor then goes on to ask:

Anenbach makes the argument that our intuition will lead us astray, encouraging men to get a prostate-specific antigen test, for instance, even though it’s no longer recommended because studies have shown that on a population level the PSA doesn’t increase the overall number of positive outcomes. But there are people whose first indication of prostate cancer was a high PSA result, and those people’s lives may have been saved due to having that test. Who is to say that the person requesting the test will not be among them? In other words, intuition is not necessarily wrong just because it encourages you to do something that is statistically out of the norm or has yet to be “proven” by science.

And who is to say that the person requesting the PSA test won’t be one who is overdiagnosed, who has an indolent cancer that would never have done him any harm during the remainder of his lifespan, but is harmed by unnecessary surgery and/or radiation? That’s the whole point! The Professor picks the good outcomes and ignores the potential for the bad outcome. Confirmation bias! She then twists all this into a massive argument for the precautionary principle, going so far as to cite the discredited Andrew Wakefield and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., both whose arguments I’ve deconstructed more times than I can remember. (Just enter their names in the search box of this blog and you’ll see.) She also mischaracterizes Achenbach as saying that the scientists most dedicated to truth are the ones who break with the “existing paradigm,” even going so far as to say that by Achenbach’s own words Andrew Wakefield must be more dedicated to the truth than most scientists. Yes, I laughed out loud when I read that part. I also reread his article and could find nowhere where he actually made that argument.

So basically, The Professor ends up arguing that we should be wary of vaccines based on the precautionary principle, ignoring all the many years of accumulated evidence that vaccines are safe and effective and do not cause autism, in favor of the “intuition” of antivaccine activists and the work of “lone geniuses” like Andrew Wakefield because, you know, all that boring epidemiology is “normal science” (to quote Kuhn) and what her antivaccine heros are doing is “revolutionary science.” It doesn’t matter that their “revolutionary science” is wrong, of course, because, you know, The People:

Science can serve corporate interests or it can serve the interests of humanity. There will certainly be places where the two will intersect, but there will always be places where they will be in opposition, and science cannot serve them both. It is most assuredly not “anti-science,” rather it is “pro-humanity” to insist that, where the interests of the two are opposed, science must serve humanity over corporations. We are nowhere near being able to say that is currently the case, however, and while it may be prudent for individual scientists to stick with the tribe in order to further their careers, it is not prudent for us as a human collective to let corporate interests govern what that tribe thinks and does. Until the day that we can say science always puts humanity’s interest first, not only is it prudent for us to question, analyze, and even scrutinize “scientific consensus” from a humanist viewpoint, it is also incumbent upon us to do so.

She even asks if it’s “antiscience” to condemn Josef Mengele’s atrocities and the Tuskegee syphilis experiment in a hilarious rhetorical flourish against a a straw man argument that no one—and I mean no one—has ever made. You know. The Professor is starting to sound a lot like a toned down version of Mike Adams. Also, instead of “I’m not antivaccine, I’m pro-vaccine safety,” we now have “I’m not antiscience, I’m pro-humanity.” It’s the perfect toxic combination of Dunning-Kruger married to an outsized ego that thinks that a bit of training in physics trumps the knowledge of people who have spent their lives studying vaccines, autism, and the immune system. In other words, it’s a perfect distillation of the antivaccine movement.

165 Comments

I’m a physical scientist myself (as is at least one other frequent flyer in this comment section). Physics teaches you how to design clean experiments on physical systems, isolating one factor at a time, and how to simplify problems. Of all the sciences, I’d think that physics is the least equipped to deal with squishy, multi-factorial problems that are woven through with personal experience.

Of course, as Brian famously said, “We’re all individuals!”, and even physicists can be trained to think like medical scientists. But working through problems in electrodynamics isn’t going to train you in how to think about the costs and benefits of vaccinations.

“Science can serve corporate interests or it can serve the interests of humanity.”

I really don’t understand why some people make our corporations to be some kind of boogeyman. It seems to be the underlying cause of the “Professor”s anti-science feelings as well as the underlying cause of ant-GMO activists anti-science feelings.

One of the things that I’ve learned in epidemiology (which is a science, contrary to what antivaxxers on Twitter say) is that everything lies on a spectrum. The distributions may be skewed one way or another, or have different shapes, but there are always things on the edges, the ones with the really weird p-values. Given that, I can see where one physician here or there can be an antivax loon (*cough* Dr. Bob Sears *cough*) or how a colleague can be misguided about the science of something. It can and will happen.

What some of these people fail or refuse to understand is that there will be that rather large swath of people who should know better and do know better. It’s not even close. To say that “some” pediatricians oppose vaccinations is like me saying that “some” of the Earth’s crust is gold, or that “some” of the rocks on the planet are diamonds.

Antivaxxers have never been good with science or math, so it doesn’t surprise me that they would claim to be the exception to everything, the independent thinkers, the parents of children who would never get measles. And it doesn’t surprise me that they claim to know science better than everyone else. After all, in the tiny, little world they’ve created in their heads, they’re right and absolutely everyone else is wrong.

“…who is to say that the person requesting the PSA test won’t be one who is overdiagnosed, who has an indolent cancer that would never have done him harm in the remainder of his lifespan, and is harmed by unnecessary surgery or radiation?”

I have been seeing a number of letters to the editor of local and national publications recently, complaining about new recommendations for mammography screening and reports questioning routine PSA testing. The pattern is to say the the writer (or his/her spouse, or a relative) had their life saved by mammography or PSA leading to detection of a tumor.

Beyond the fact that we don’t know what the natural history of those neoplasms might have been, I wonder where the letters are from people who were left with lower quality of life after radiation and/or radical surgery for lesions that might never have progressed into threatening, invasive cancers?
Either they don’t exist (hmm) or they’re not writing in.

More to the point of Orac’s article: sometimes I wonder if Einstein, Galileo etc. aren’t continuously spinning in their graves because people are holding them up as examples to back up truly dumbass arguments.

In my experience, at least anecdotally, most of the “intuition” is less like a flash of brilliance that appears from no where and has you running down the street yelling Eureka and more like the data hammering away at your assumptions based on the current understanding of the universe until you finally emerge whimpering and bruised.

Why in experimental design testing all the aliquots or whatever you need to do to let the data hammer away at the assumptions is so important. Which is also something that very often small scale studies (the kind most likely to be wrong) are often so wrong. They may appear to be that flash of brilliance but all too often they are really the experimenter disabling the hammer. Usually not with the intent to disable the hammer but because you just need to collect enough small data points to justify the kind of experimental design in scope and cost that fully unleashes the power of the data to smash it’s way through the current understanding to show you a new room you never knew was there.

I often wonder the same thing as Mike. Research and science requires resources. A lot of good HAS come from private and public research and collaboration between the two. It’s almost as if the ‘shill’, anti-corporation and even anti-government arguments are a jealous rage to not having the resources to produce their own data at best, or an attempt to destroy the validity of the data that causes cognitive dissonance in their own minds at worst.

And a sincere question: I have an acquaintance whose first son had a severe reaction to his first vaccination and almost died. While I, and everyone here, understand that a case like this illustrates how even more imperative for this family to be pro-vaccine, so as her children can be protected through herd immunity. (And that this represents a legitimate medical reason for not vaccinating.) But in her mind it almost cost her the life of her son, and she is very anti-vaccine as a result. That’s a very difficult thing to convince otherwise.

That all being said, while we can talk statistics and science and the great good of eradicating infections disease (which I agree with), it is very real for those few who have been affected by what can be very serious side effects of these drugs in a few people. And that is a very difficult thing I think to talk about, and I’ve wondered how does one address this?

The invocation of Einstein is especially galling. Relativity is a great example of a theory that extended and clarified previous knowledge rather than radically replacing it. Einstein invented special relativity because he understood the existing theory of electrodynamics more deeply than others — he saw that Maxwell’s theory already had relativity implicit in it.

Although she has a ‘degree in physics”, her TMR bio ( “Getting Personal”) describes her as an ‘actor/ geek” who has a “lifelong interest in autism”. OBVIOUSLY that’s where all that intuition comes in handy.

Seriously, do people like the Professor and AoA’s Gamondes ever sit down and actually read what they’ve written? Or ask someone else to criticise what their essays? Or do they just read the dreck Mikey and other loons write, go meditate somewhere whilst doing aromatherapy and then regurgitate whatever comes to mind and declare it brilliant?

There’s a concept called executive functioning which usually develops during adolescence and includes abilities like self-criticism and understanding the needs of other people while communicating which the Professor doesn’t seem to intuit.

The anti-vax crowd does accept science… But only by citing a few selected research papers that fit their paradigm! Otherwise, they claim that all research needs resources (like El Jefe says) and BIG PHARMA pays for it so thus BIG PHARMA dictates what the study outcomes & conclusions should be.

Seriously, do people like the Professor and AoA’s Gamondes ever sit down and actually read what they’ve written? Or ask someone else to criticise what their essays? Or do they just read the dreck Mikey and other loons write, go meditate somewhere whilst doing aromatherapy and then regurgitate whatever comes to mind and declare it brilliant?

I was enjoying a respite from work, tennis and dance class and intending to traipse around the Japanese teenage fashion store- in search of shirts that aren’t long enough for me altho’ I try anyway- BUT now I have to read that slimey biofilm of decaying vegetative free associative thought masquerading as prose.
But I serve skepticism FIRST, entertainment later.

Funny how a “geeky physics major” cites Einstein, who did follow his intuition to fail spectacularly, regarding the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics (you could look for the Einstein-Bohr debate). Einstein, who fought all his life against it, did not hold a grudge though, as he himself nominated for the Nobel Prize the very guy who postulated the uncertainty principle, Heisenberg.

See the study just published in Science discussing measles and loss of lymphocytic memory?
Yet another important point not to get full blown measles, though funded by the Gates, which I’m sure just invalidates it in the mind of the anti-vax ‘science’.

Followed the linkback from mothering forums in #10. First someone posted the TMR article and there was agreement. Then Orac’s article was posted as a rebuttal and someone said “yes but who was more convincing and why? [paraphrased]” It surely is coincidental but I thought that nicely paralleled the problem on a small scale. There “evidence” is infallible and ours is never good enough.

#7: “But in her mind it almost cost her the life of her son, and she is very anti-vaccine as a result. That’s a very difficult thing to convince otherwise.”

Most find it unsatisfying to shake their fists at the heavens when a rare, random event alters their lives forever. It is very tempting to turn one’s attention to the medical professional holding the syringe. That they know how to fight and feel they are accomplishing something positive.

-btw-
I shouldn’t joke too much about her scavenger-hunt style of prose or the Crosbyan six degrees of relationships because SOME of these people – and I’m not saying which ones- MAY have more serious problems psychologically than being florid exemplars of bad writing.

Followed the linkback from mothering forums in #10. First someone posted the TMR article and there was agreement. Then Orac’s article was posted as a rebuttal and someone said “yes but who was more convincing and why? [paraphrased]” It surely is coincidental but I thought that nicely paralleled the problem on a small scale. There “evidence” is infallible and ours is never good enough.

That’s because, with the antivaccine movement, it really is all about tribalism. To antivaxers, who makes an argument is as important (or more so) than what the argument says and what the evidence is supporting it. To them, Orac is the enemy, a skeptic, someone who can never, ever be correct. No matter how much evidence I marshal, they will always find a way to discount it, falling back on the “pharma shill” gambit if all else fails.

I shouldn’t joke too much about her scavenger-hunt style of prose or the Crosbyan six degrees of relationships because SOME of these people – and I’m not saying which ones- MAY have more serious problems psychologically than being florid exemplars of bad writing.

In fairness, The Professor’s writing is actually not too bad; it’s at least serviceable prose. It’s her arguments and grasp of science and history that are so risibly bad.

I tell my students that half of what’s in the scientific literature at the moment is wrong – it won’t hold up – but that 20 years from now the ideas that were wrong today will be gone and the ones that are right today will still be there. Science is hardly infallible, but it’s pretty much guaranteed to be progressive, and that makes it the best thing we’ve got.

I can see why it’s difficult for nonscientists to confuse that winnowing selection process with Kuhnian paradigm shifts.

Yet another important point not to get full blown measles, though funded by the Gates, which I’m sure just invalidates it in the mind of the anti-vax ‘science’.

Yes, because it makes perfect sense to these people that a man who made his millions selling computer systems would adopt as a business model killing off his clientele.

Speaking as a non-scientist (I have an MBA), business and science both come down on the side of vaccines. This is why businesses large and small offer vaccinations as part of their employee healthcare plans — absenteeism (whether it’s the employee or the employee’s child that’s sick) costs money.

Yet another important point not to get full blown measles, though funded by the Gates, which I’m sure just invalidates it in the mind of the anti-vax ‘science’.

Some additional predictions as to how this study will be interpreted.

1. Only because measles depletes vitamins, so not a worry for any who rattle when they walk or eat all organic, etc.
2. If the disease does that the vaccine does something way worse, probably it destroys the part of the immune system that keeps you from getting autism.
3. The increased survival is obviously only those who are really too weak to survive, so we need more measles to thin out the herd.

This is why businesses large and small offer vaccinations as part of their employee healthcare plans — absenteeism (whether it’s the employee or the employee’s child that’s sick) costs money.

Yeah, and the military.

I was in a unit that could be ordered anywhere at any time, and was required to stay up to date on everything. I’ve been places where I was glad to have all my shots, and wouldn’t have objected if they wanted to give me a few more.

In all of our travels, none of us ever came down with a vaccine preventable disease.

The government spends a lot of money to keep the military and civilian employees up to date on shots. All wasted, I’m sure. /sarcasm

I get that the graph is on all causes of deaths, not just infections. I do think it safe to say that the so-called (at this point) measles affect did not affect mortality rate in the USA in a big way. The graphs do not show it.”

“To make such claims, there would need to be extensive research. I think being able to determine the infectious diseases in each of these individuals would be important to see if any of those diseases occur at the same rate, or are completely different and random. Are there any common variables? I think breaking down and determining the number and types of infectious diseases they encountered would be an important factor in weighing the information as well. They surely must have recorded the infectious diseases these individuals encountered after the measles infection during these studies, right? Why not present them as well.

Also, it would be important in determining the underlying health of the children who were exposed to the infectious diseases after having the measles, and even their health before measles, and it’s important to determine how the measles was managed during infection? Could mismanaging the measles infection and interfering with the immune system process in the incorrect manner during infection have anything to do with immune system weakness down the road?

What else could be cutting down the rate of all infectious diseases besides the measles vaccine? Many things have changed since the vaccine has been introduced, so why are we to assume it’s the vaccine? There easily can be something else that has changed the course of infectious disease that has nothing to do with the vaccine.

These are all questions that would have to be addressed to verify such claims.

Apparently, they are far from it, as “immune amnesia” is currently just a hypothesis.

I gather they are focusing primarily on trying to search and find and report on more benefits of the vaccine, even if it’s a stretch, because of the current circumstances we are in now. Did you see the number of articles out there on this already? And it hasn’t even been CONFIRMED AS TRUE! But people will see it and believe it sadly.”

I really don’t understand why some people make our corporations to be some kind of boogeyman.

Look at the tobacco industry. A great way to make money was discovered, and then, much later, extremely serious medical side effects were discovered. And the reaction of the tobacco industry was many decades of enormous dishonesty.

Look at the lead additives industry. Again, a great way to make money was discovered, and then, much later, extremely serious medical side effects were discovered, and again, the reaction of the industry was many decades of enormous dishonesty.

Look at the fossil fuel companies. Again, a great way to make money was discovered, and then, much later, extremely serious medical and environmental side effects were discovered, and again, the reaction of the industry has been decades of enormous dishonesty.

Furthermore this blog has over a decade of articles about the organic food industry, the supplements industry, and many other businesses that make money of falsehoods. There are many examples of copious dishonesty in the pursuit of greed, and it’s absurd of you to act like you are unaware of them.

Yes, it is true that corporations, when carefully regulated, can be beneficial. And it is true that many people assume corporations have a kind foresight or a degree of ability to conspire that is unlikely or even impossible. All the examples I gave above stumbled into their decades of dishonesty. They did not plan things that way in the early years, but, when they found out, instead of doing the ethical thing, and finding a different way to make money, they all behaved in an irreparably immoral fashion that resulted in huge numbers of deaths.

Big Pharma, on the other hand could drop vaccines from its product line and still remain solvent. In fact, it’s my understanding that the big money nowadays is in statins and fertility drugs (I know someone here will correct me if I’m wrong).

“What else could be cutting down the rate of all infectious diseases besides the measles vaccine? Many things have changed since the vaccine has been introduced, so why are we to assume it’s the vaccine? There easily can be something else that has changed the course of infectious disease that has nothing to do with the vaccine.”

Any researcher worth their salt would have accounted for all of these confounders.

“I really don’t understand why some people make our corporations to be some kind of boogeyman.” Mike

Because they manufactured medical peer review, which we now know is a sacred cow that needs slaughter. the ‘evidence’ it presents is largely fallacy, it makes governments pay millions in taxpayers money, over and over again for useless vaccines…………

Maybe you should get past pubmed and read something a bit more useful.

“Big Pharma, on the other hand could drop vaccines from its product line and still remain solvent. In fact, it’s my understanding that the big money nowadays is in statins and fertility drugs (I know someone here will correct me if I’m wrong).” shay

Well vaccines are profitable when you get governments to underwrite failure, pay through the nose for a rushed untested product….. where is the ‘not profit’ in that , it is a guaranteed payout for a product that is usually completely useless. Latest estimate on flu vaccine is 3% ‘effective. But it was 100% effective on payment!

“Look at the tobacco industry. A great way to make money was discovered, and then, much later, extremely serious medical side effects were discovered. And the reaction of the tobacco industry was many decades of enormous dishonesty.” whoever

yes and now we have ‘safe vaping tobacco” big pharma is making money by selling the safer option! Double whammy and trebles all round. Well done.

Yes, it is true that corporations, when carefully regulated, can be beneficial.

Pharmaceuticals are already one of the most regulated industries in the US. There could be improvements and I worry about “health freedom” nonsense leading to less regulation but as it stands Big Pharma seems much less scary to me than Big Supplement.

In fact, it’s my understanding that the big money nowadays is in statins and fertility drugs (I know someone here will correct me if I’m wrong).

Last I heard Lipitor (atorvastatin) was the most profitable drug in the history of ever, and by a huge margin and it’s been off patent sibce 2011. Not sure about fertility drugs but I think antidepressants are up there as well.

“Could mismanaging the measles infection and interfering with the immune system process in the incorrect manner during infection have anything to do with immune system weakness down the road? ” Annie

yes Annie, when a hyped western death from measles is looked at we always find the death was in a child or adult with underlying health issues. You could say healthy kids don’t die from measles. The WHO found that one carrot a day was enough of the identified vitamin A deficiency in people who died from measles. We don’t need a vaccine, we need to feed people properly and stop messing with the immune system artificially.

“……….ignoring all the many years of accumulated evidence that vaccines are safe and effective and do not cause autism, …..” the Gawk

But the ‘evidence’ was published peer reviewed medical toast. When are you going to land the rocket, get out and realise that you are on planet gaboo? You need a good shaking, it is the same washing machine of brown pebbles going around and around………………………………..no amount of spin is going to get the brown stuff out………….

“but as it stands Big Pharma seems much less scary to me than Big Supplement.” Cappertypoo

thing is chuffy, the stats for supplement death compared to big pharma death………………………. to have a bias like that you have either misunderstood something or you have some kind of crazy belief system stacked up there. You decide, if you were my doc, I’d make big excuses and depart politely.

I kept wanting to find a clear example of someone descending into the pits of mental disease. I think I just did with Johnny. The number of periods in an ellipses is directly correlated with the level of detachment from reality.

Because they manufactured medical peer review, which we now know is a sacred cow that needs slaughter. the ‘evidence’ it presents is largely fallacy, it makes governments pay millions in taxpayers money, over and over again for useless vaccines…………

Maybe you should get past pubmed and read something a bit more useful.

As we ask you (and you fail to answer) every time you bring this up, what is your alternative? Divination? As Orac said, it’s not perfect, not even great, but it is far, far better than the alternatives.

@38

yes and now we have ‘safe vaping tobacco” big pharma is making money by selling the safer option! Double whammy and trebles all round. Well done.

Because Pfizer manufacters vaporizes now? That’s news to me.

@41
Annie was quoting someone on the Mothering forums there. I know misattribution is kind of your thing but please don’t insult her by attributing that twaddle to her.

@44

thing is chuffy, the stats for supplement death compared to big pharma

I know stats are confusing for you but the one you need to look at is risk vs benefit. Besides, those stats come from peer reviewed sources. If you want to throw out medical science you have to do it wholesale not piecemeal where convenient. That’s beside the point anyways. The manufacture, content, advertising claims, are pretty much unregulated and efficacy and safety testing nonexistent for supplements. The FDA is pretty stringent in regulating pharmaceuticals though.

One of the best reads! Very detail oriented, thorough,logical arguments.

As far as the rebuttal…its hard to take the author seriously when it’s written in such a hateful way. Really,name calling in nearly every paragraph,poking fun,laughing at,etc. A scientific rebuttal that is strong in their reasoning doesn’t need incessant child-like behavior to make their point. The author simply can’t help themselves. Its like listening to an angry highschool breakup where all they do is bad mouth the other person while trying to piece together why they’re mad. Yet,antivaxers are the emotional ones….riigght. To be fair,i don’t prefer that type of writing even if the author is writing on a topic i agree with.

I kept wanting to find a clear example of someone descending into the pits of mental disease. I think I just did with Johnny. The number of periods in an ellipses is directly correlated with the level of detachment from reality.

Honestly, I feel a little sorry for him. He seems to live in a reality where nothing can ever trusted be true because of shadowy conspiracies involving the government and Big Pharma, to keep everyone eternally sick or something. That quite the terrifying delusion.

“I kept wanting to find a clear example of someone descending into the pits of mental disease. I think I just did with Johnny. The number of periods in an ellipses is directly correlated with the level of detachment from reality.”

What I want to know about this whole corporate conspiracy idea is why the Soviet Union decided to go along with it. You’d think that it would make better PR to point out that capitalistic greed was leading to whatever they’re accusing Big Pharma of instead of doing the same things to the citizens of the Soviet Union. I don’t see the motivation for that.

I don’t think johnny is mentally ill – I believe he’s just an Internet troll that likes the attention he gets when he says something so blatantly stupid that even the average person, horrified at the ignorance shown, feels compelled to correct him.

So, he’ll keep repeating the same tired lies, over and over again….because he’s the one “using tissues” and getting his jollies from it.

As far as the rebuttal…its hard to take the author seriously when it’s written in such a hateful way. Really,name calling in nearly every paragraph,poking fun,laughing at,etc. A scientific rebuttal that is strong in their reasoning doesn’t need incessant child-like behavior to make their point. The author simply can’t help themselves. Its like listening to an angry highschool breakup where all they do is bad mouth the other person while trying to piece together why they’re mad. Yet,antivaxers are the emotional ones….riigght. To be fair,i don’t prefer that type of writing even if the author is writing on a topic i agree with.

Hateful. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. And I actually ended up being less brutal towards The Professor than I had originally thought I’d be. Oh, well.

One can’t help but note that this denizen of Mothering.com doesn’t mind The Professor’s basically painting the entire medical enterprise as corrupt, greedy, and ignorant—as long as she does it relatively “nicely.” That’s why I call BS on her claim that she doesn’t like this sort of writing even when she agrees with it. She doesn’t like my post because she agrees with The Professor and doesn’t like seeing her arguments and examples deconstructed in a snarky fashion. Particularly hilarious is that she finds The Professor’s arguments “logical” when they most definitely are not. More nauseatingly depressing are the numerous comments after her post proclaiming it “brilliant,” saying that it should be published on the front page of the New York Times (which is never going to happen with a 7,000 word article), that it’s “logical and well-argued.” Methinks these readers mistake length and tendentiousness for insight.

I don’t think johnny is mentally ill – I believe he’s just an Internet troll that likes the attention he gets when he says something so blatantly stupid that even the average person, horrified at the ignorance shown, feels compelled to correct him.

OK, people. I’m not particularly fond of johnny either, but I am not liking seeing it implied and speculated about without evidence that he is mentally ill.

OK, people. I’m not particularly fond of johnny either, but I am not liking seeing it implied and speculated about without evidence that he is mentally ill.

I would like to point that being a stupid obnoxious jerk is rather more damning than being mentally ill, which shouldn’t really be an insult, and there’s actually plenty of evidence to back that up it comes to “johnny.”

@Orac
littlebear seems to be lacking in self-awareness for several aspects. 🙂

I do have to wonder if idiosyncratic writing mechanics is one of the skills taught in antivax school.

More nauseatingly depressing are the numerous comments after her post proclaiming it “brilliant,” saying that it should be published on the front page of the New York Times (which is never going to happen with a 7,000 word article), that it’s “logical and well-argued.” Methinks these readers mistake length and tendentiousness for insight.

Connecting lots of things together would be insightful if the connections were real and meaningful instead of mistaken and wrongfully assumed. 🙂

Then, I re-read Gamondes and found nothing of value to discuss- we’ve heard it all before and we’ll hear it all again.

Reflecting upon a few comments here:

None of us can diagnose anyone over the internet. We should all remember though that bloggers and commenters are writing _for an audience_ and may exaggerate their outrageous memes because they are in competition with others who write similarly so I wouldn’t take what they write as an indication of what they really believe.

Perhaps Gamondes is courting Skyhorse’s Lyons for a book deal *a la* Dachel or KIm. Wouldn’t that be fun!

HOWEVER I believe that some of those who write for anti-vax websites like AoA and TMR DO have psychological problems- as do certain individuals in ANY group of people. Most of these parents have stressful, difficult lives because of their children’s condition; in addition, they could have underlying lifelong disorders that they can’t help having- with which I’d sympathise .Thus I am not as rough on them as I am on various woo-fraught entrepreneurs who lie for a living..

Should we criticise people who have ‘problems in thinking’? Yes, if what they write endangers public health.

It’s possible that sometimes thinking oddly is not free of choice but merely a way to enhance self-esteem by contrarians who are not mentally ill but who seek to arrogate positions they have not earned- e.g. as critics of medicine without ever having studied that science.

I’d ask though, isn’t it odd that they NEED to set themselves up as authorities and advisers? Do they have so little that validates their existence? Why do they need to take down entire sectors of research implicating all professions as well as governments around the world and most media as well? Do they feel that badly about themselves and their lot that they need to be right?

And -btw- in order to accept their theses, you need to accept that widespread, entrenched corruption exists nearly everywhere or else their entire castle built on air collapses pathetically in a heap.

As Gamondes today admits herself “substantiation” is difficult because the great conspiracy takes place in “secret meetings” so it can’t be shown. Right.

Nowhere is this more true than when we wander outside of our own field, as the inaptly named Professor does when she leaves the world of physics….

That’s not her field. She’s a (fairly obsolete, judging by the LinkedIn profile) random IT monkey, with a B.A. in “physics, computer programming” from Williams College that’s at least a quarter-century old.

Look at the lead additives industry. Again, a great way to make money was discovered, and then, much later, extremely serious medical side effects were discovered, and again, the reaction of the industry was many decades of enormous dishonesty.

The neurotoxic side-effects of tetraethyl lead were known right from the beginning, but General Motors convinced legislators that the convenience was worth the mortality. It was only the advent of catalytic after-burners that forced the phase-out of TEL.

Pharmaceuticals are already one of the most regulated industries in the US.

Yes – but as far as I can tell, we both support that regulation, for the most part, because that is a big reason why their products are relatively safe and effective. As for the “health freedom” thing – I don’t think allowing people to make unsupported claims – let alone demonstrably false claims – in a for-profit support of a product, improves the freedom of any decent person in any way. In fact, I think allowing unsupported claims in the pursuit of profit enables an enormous amount of misleading advertising, which makes making good choices difficult, risky, and confusing. That makes freedom useless. (There are some other “health freedom” ideas I may support, but the term is so often misused by people who as far as I can tell are confused or even unscrupulous, that I am wary of any use of it.)

But most people have no clue how or why the pharmaceutical industry is regulated, so it’s absurd to keep saying “I really don’t understand why” when people are afraid of it. That remark wasn’t directed at you, though. I don’t recall you ever taking that attitude I was objecting to.

capnkrunch:

Big Pharma seems much less scary to me than Big Supplement.

I think we agree that Big Supplement needs to be regulated a lot like Big Pharma. Actually I think they are great example of how giving businesses the freedom to advertise however they like makes consumer freedom almost useless. For example, I have no idea how to figure out which supplement manufacturers can be relied upon to put what they claim on the package in the actual pills. But I don’t buy supplements anymore, because the last time I went looking for B12 supplements, I couldn’t find any in nearby stores that were less than 500 mcg, and a quick google shows that’s still the case for the first few links. I can’t take the 500 mcg pills; they make me vomit. I can’t remember what the NIH says for B12, but it’s small number of mcg – like 2 mcg. it’s nowhere near 500. I can order 50 mcg pills online from CVS, and those seem to work, but the local CVS doesn’t carry them. And I would rather CVS did not get my money.

But most people have no clue how or why the pharmaceutical industry is regulated, so it’s absurd to keep saying “I really don’t understand why” when people are afraid of it. That remark wasn’t directed at you, though. I don’t recall you ever taking that attitude I was objecting to.

I gotcha. That was poor reading of your original post on my part suppose.

“Science can serve corporate interests or it can serve the interests of humanity. … and science cannot serve them both (when those interests are in opposition).”

I’ve been seeing this kind of relativistic thinking leveled at science a lot lately (partly b/c I’m helping a woo-y friend on one of his personal projects).

Like, I’m a little out of my depth here, but science is a process, right? Sure, you can use it to answer a question for profit – “What combination of flavors is most likely to produce repeat customers” – but how does that stop science from answering other questions?

And in this particular case, science could be used to uncover the benefits and risks of vaccines, but it couldn’t be used to lie about those benefits and risks – if you’re ignoring data, you’re using flawed science! You’re not doing it right!

I mean, this argument just feels like it’s even more numbskulled than shouting “the science is on our side!” when it clearly isn’t – it’s saying that science is merely a tool to build your argument, rather than a process designed to winnow out falsehoods (however chaotically or slowly). It’s basically saying, “We have our science, and they have theirs, but ours is superior because we’re righteous.”

It’s ironic that she mentions HST right before going into the “lone genius” routine. Yah, dark energy was just like the structure of benzene.

“Consider the case of a child growing up in a house with chain smokers in the early 1900s” is a fine example of her attention to “the data” as well. Cigarette smoking didn’t even take hold among women until the 1940s, IIRC.

And, in classic argument-by-aphorism tradition, “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination” is a bogus quote.

Vaccines are one of the fastest rising sectors in a hugely profitable industry. In fact, according to Marcia Angell, for over two decades the pharmaceutical industry has been far and away the most profitable in the United States.

Another person who does not think people should be paid for the work they put into developing a product. Often in the next breath will call for the removal of thimerosal from vaccines world wide, even though it makes vaccines much more expensive in developing countries.

Well, even the UK’s NHS has to pay for vaccines and medical care provider salaries And it is obvious why American health insurance companies do research in vaccines and other health preventative measures, as they hate spending money on stuff that could have been prevented.

The author of the article linked to #77 is Stephen Cornish-
Stephen Cornish is the executive director of Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Canada. MSF is a humanitarian organization dedicated to bringing medical assistance and relieving suffering in natural disasters, epidemics and conflicts. Steve has worked for MSF since 1996, and has directed MSF country programs in Africa, South America, and the Russian Federation. He has led humanitarian medical responses to civil wars, disease epidemics, natural disasters and malnutrition crises. Steve has also worked for the Canadian Red Cross and CARE Canada.

Lots of nice brown logs in the washing machine boys and girls, but the key thing is – your position is soley based on medical peer review. Here is another journal admitting that medical peer review is faith based, pity your gods are broken marketeers and profit log massagers

“But does peer review `work’ at all? A systematic review of all the available evidence on peer review concluded that `the practice of peer review is based on faith in its effects, rather than on facts’.2”

“no where does the name of a manufacturer of a rotavirus and HPV vaccine appear?” Christ our lord

You are quoting the market research – the honest research shows us that the cervical cancer vaccine is brown logs.

“We find that HPV vaccine clinical trials design, and data interpretation of both efficacy and safety outcomes, were largely inadequate. Additionally, we note evidence of selective reporting of results from clinical trials (i.e., exclusion of vaccine efficacy figures related to study subgroups in which efficacy might be lower or even negative from peer-reviewed publications)”

” For example, the claim that HPV vaccination will result in approximately 70% reduction of cervical cancers is made despite the fact that the clinical trials data have not demonstrated to date that the vaccines have actually prevented a single case of cervical cancer (let alone cervical cancer death), nor that the current overly optimistic surrogate marker-based extrapolations are justified.

Here we go gathering nuts in may, nuts in may, nuts in may. I came here to look at rigorous discourse in the therapeutics sciences and what do I find – a load of quasi religious goons trying to sell us flawed, un proven concepts and then get all dog-whistle aggressive when their teddy falls out of the pram.

It’s called a ‘loss leader’ and gains lots of brownie points for political leverage. You can dump shit on the third world, cover your costs and get a pat on the head. Bill Gate’s Polio minus campaign is just that, you also get to name a disease after yourself in the process

“Chris and Narad -suggest you read the link before commenting.
Here’s another one to comment on w/o reading first. the-right-shot-msf-calls-on-drug-companies-to-slash-vaccine-prices-for-poor-countries” Kenny

It’s called a ‘loss leader’ and gains lots of brownie points for political leverage. You can dump shit on the third world, cover your costs and get a pat on the head. Bill Gate’s Polio minus campaign is just that, you also get to name a disease after yourself in the process

“So you’re opposed to the measles vaccine because it only saves the lives of sick and disabled people?

You vile bigot, why should I listen to someone who has just told me that perfectly decent people don’t deserve to live because they don’t fit his eugenicist prejudices?” Sticky Vicki

Nice switch, I object to the appeals to emotion that suggest all kids will go blind, be permantly disabled or die if they don’t get the measles vaccine. When we look into it what do we find, no deaths in America from the recent Disney event, despite the threats. The only death in Germany was in a boy who had had the vaccine 10 days before his death and he already had serious underlying health problems.

it is vile and manipulative to try to scare people into using a product that only has paid for peer reviewed medical published evidence of efficacy. It was totally disgusting to use the world media and get world governments to pay for swine flu vaccine, by its own standards, untested and underwritten for side effects and scare the hell out of people for no good reason. If you put Al Qaeda at the front of that it would be a terrorist campaign.

“They could make healthcare free the world over. But capitalism.” Annie get your gun

Well that is the idea of taxes dear, before we joined the public and private sector there was a distinction. We paid tax for roads, healthcare, post service, water, etc. Then they privatized the services and now we pay tax and get brown logs. The idea of tax is for society to share an infrastructure and all pay into it. Now we pay for crap service and can’t hold any politicians to account. In the self styled paid for politician like Mr Gates – we can sell snake oil and get profits from shares and do what we like and get nowhere near holding anyone to account. Swine flu………

I followed the linkback from Mothering as well and saw there is already a discussion there about the new Measles study.

My connection timed out before I could fully download the two .mov files (s2 and s3), and I was tired of standing in the alley, but I’m reminded just how bad “supplementary material” can be. There was enough of s3 to determine that it’s preposterously wide, and s1 is basically a Powerpoint deal with a really annoying animated-text routine glued on.

That’s because, with the antivaccine movement, it really is all about tribalism. To antivaxers, who makes an argument is as important (or more so) than what the argument says and what the evidence is supporting it. To them, Orac is the enemy, a skeptic, someone who can never, ever be correct. No matter how much evidence I marshal, they will always find a way to discount it, falling back on the “pharma shill” gambit if all else fails.

Whereas Orac’s blog comments provide an example of what reasoned debate should really be like.

zebra, you mean like the time you said “Gambler’s Fallacy” and never bothered to explain what you meant by it? Or deliberately misquoting people, then insisting that since you used single quote, people should have known you were paraphrasing? You are not an honest person, stop pretending you are.

I’m a little late to the comments here, but I cringe when I see the PSA prostate cancer screening issue being used as an example of using intuition over evidence/science-based decision making. This issue is nowhere near the level of “accepted consensus” despite the USPSTF recommendation against screening. In fact, a number of other entities still recommend this practice, including the NCCN, and for good reason.

For full disclosure, I am a practicing urologist, so you could argue I am biased because I have a horse in the race–PSA screening and prostate cancer treatment makes up a good bit of my practice. I think that’s an overly cynical point of view that disregards the fact that I too want to know what the science and evidence say so I can do the best for my patients. That said, it seems as thought the USPSTF recommendations are an excellent example of cherry-picking the data: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25733258.

Generally, it seems the data do support at least some form of PSA prostate cancer screening (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20598634), and the attention should be on how best to treat prostate cancer when we find it (and, indeed, not treating when it’s not necessary to do so). Not screening for prostate cancer feels like throwing the baby out with the bath water.

In any case, it seems that a better example of intuition over evidence could be used than this one, as the consensus is no where near as strong as the USPSTF statement would make it out to be.

I would tend to disagree (mostly), although I will concede that there might be value to PSA screening in certain high risk populations, which have not yet been identified. Part of the reason is that overdiagnosis in prostate cancer is a bigger deal than it is in breast cancer because the treatments for prostate cancer are significantly more morbid.

So what’s your point exactly? That Big Pharma’s malfeasance should be hushed up and everyone should pretend they never do anything wrong, just like Big Altie and its tedious shills and sycophants already do?

I never brought up thimerosal. Get a grip. You are seriously obfuscating important issues.

If you ever actually paid attention to topics discussed here, instead of just posting links, it might possibly have wandered within shouting distance of your intellect that one of the ways to keep vaccine costs down in countries where electricity is problematic is WITH THE USE OF PRESERVATIVES LIKE THIMEROSAL.

I wish I was British right now so I could use the pejorative you deserve.

Dan O has posted a lovely graph that OBVIOUSLY must prove that ASDs are increasng alarmingly because, he opines, the other disabilities labelled vary but do NOT clearly go up as the figures for autism do. It’s all there in black and white- clear as day! ( eh, actually in various shades to depict different conditions/ disabilities).

Yes, after 1996, the autism figures rise and rise with NO end in sight apparently. There are no figures prior to that year. I’m SURE that nothing odd happened just prior to that point in time that might possibly affect the chart.

“I would tend to disagree (mostly), although I will concede that there might be value to PSA screening in certain high risk populations, which have not yet been identified. ” Obiwan kenobi

Well that’s logical, it has value in people we haven’t identified yet!!!!! Isn’t it wonderful having someone with ability to put a sentence out like that as part of ‘reasoned discourse’. Is there any wonder……..

My point in my admittedly long-winded comment was not to prove that PSA prostate cancer screening works, but that its use is not an issue that is settled, despite the recommendations of one group (USPSTF). This makes it an a less-than-ideal example to use in the context of intuition trumping evidence.

As an aside, and without getting into the relative differences in the side effects of prostate vs. breast cancer treatment, what we can definitely improve right now is not so much overdiagnosis, but rather overtreatment: treat only those cancers that would negatively impact the overall health and quality of life of the patient, and leave those that would not alone. Of course, the holy grail is a test that would help us detect only the former and never the latter, but right now, the PSA is the best we’ve got.

PS–I find the blog(s) very insightful, and I have recommended them to colleagues and friends as often as I can. Keep up the great work!

Dr. Chim Richalds,
At the last UK NHS clinical biochemistry laboratory I worked in, we established a rule that we would only do PSA on men older than 50 with symptoms of prostatitis, or for monitoring of known disease with or without treatment. We would refuse an order from a doctor for a PSA that did not fit our criteria. I forget the exact literature we based this on but the aim was to reduce false positives (and negative) as much as possible while not reducing the sensitivity too much.

I doubt ken actually reads the articles. She probably doesn’t understand she is using a technique called “poisoning the well.” A group calls for a company to lower a vaccine price for developing countries, yet one reason it is more costly is that it was developed to be thimerosal free, which means single doses are more expensive and it is more difficult t maintain its quality in countries with limited electricity, etc.

She misses so much, mostly because she has closed mind and unwilling to do more than parrot links she read on other sites.

I respect the article’s author (Stephen Cornish) see#82 more than the opinions of the minions.
#106 Denise -you have never posted any link supporting your statements.
#114 GSK has “poisoned their own well”see #96 as to their trustworthiness in regards to pricing. Really- are you all so brainwashed as to not see the profit motive in markups?
The group is “doctors w/o borders.” What arrogance you all have.

It is simple really, it isn’t about being pro or anti vaxx it’s about evidence. The only evidence presented here for vaccination is medical peer reviewed submissions.

If the editors of those journals calls MPRE a sacred cow that needs slaughtering and that the majority of what is published is nonsense the only debate should really be why on earth are you flat earthers still beating the drum for vaccination. It’s a no brainer.

” For example, the claim that HPV vaccination will result in approximately 70% reduction of cervical cancers is made despite the fact that the clinical trials data have not demonstrated to date that the vaccines have actually prevented a single case of cervical cancer (let alone cervical cancer death), nor that the current overly optimistic surrogate marker-based extrapolations are justified.

I also don’t recall AoA’s getting around to applying their collective acumen to this (see also the rapid response and Paul Whiteley’s take).

Turning back to Van Naarden Braun, though, D’Ohlmsted glaringly fails to note that ID was stable, which kind of throws a sabot into “they get the shot, that night they have a fever of a hundred and three, they go to sleep, and three months later their brain is gone.”

In addition, strangely – despite Jesse Jackson’s and Al Sharpton’s failure to play ball – “the highest ASD prevalence estimate for any subgroup was among [non-Hispanic White] males in 2010 (30.6 per 1,000 or 1 in 33).”

Oh, good grief. It is not like only one person takes on a ‘nym from a movie, book or other media they liked. What does Clueless ken think of the person who posts with a name of kids’ sugary morning cereal?

” For example, the claim that HPV vaccination will result in approximately 70% reduction of cervical cancers is made despite the fact that the clinical trials data have not demonstrated to date that the vaccines have actually prevented a single case of cervical cancer (let alone cervical cancer death), nor that the current overly optimistic surrogate marker-based extrapolations are justified.

This quote from Tomljenovic and Shaw is either mendacious or stupid. I favour the former. You quote it with approval. In your case, I favour the latter.

Really- are you all so brainwashed as to not see the profit motive in markups

Are you so stupid you don’t understand that a firm that doesn’t make a profit goes out of business? Yes, you probably are. After all, Chris’ comment about thimerosal went so far over your head it couldn’t have been brought down with a Stinger.

Um…yes, I used a pseudonym online. If I’ve deceived you into believing I was the real assumed identity of a fictional movie character, then apologies all around. As for when I recommend the blog, I use my real name. Otherwise, friends and colleagues would be confused as to why it’s not the same as the name written on my underwear.

” I forget the exact literature we based this on but the aim was to reduce false positives (and negative) as much as possible while not reducing the sensitivity too much.” The Kreb
Well that’s scientific then…………………

I’m amazed at how much Dunning-Kruger johnny was able to squeeze into such a tiny post, with so few words his. Truly, it’s a work of art.

If you don’t believe me, take the johnny Challenge. Try to fit “I don’t have the foggiest notion what any of the words I just quoted that are longer than six letters mean” into four words and twenty-two punctuation marks. See if you can out-johnny johnny!

One might note that the “johnny Challenge” (regarding the prose efforts of Philip Hills, Hope Osteopathic Clinic Essex) is rather trivially defeated semantically with just this four-word dictionary. He never did merit a bot, but I strongly suspect that there are other subsets ready to hand for the Markov chaining.

One can only wonder what his visits to the confessional at Our Lady and St. Joseph are like. Or whether his religiosity is essentially the same as being a Rotarian, for that matter.

@denise – the desperation over at AoA is palatable….SB277 continues to move forward in CA (a supposed bastion of anti-vax sentiment) and bills in other states have been revitalized with the successes in California as well.

Washington State, which initially rejected a bill to tighten exemptions, just had another small measles outbreak – and talk is that another strong look will be taken at the exemptions bill.

New studies continue to be released showing no link between autism and vaccines, while other studies are showing that diseases like Measles have a greater negative effect on the immune system than first thought (and blowing holes in the anti-vax arguments that “natural immunity” is better).

And of course, AoA has gone well down the road into full-blown tin-foil hat territory with the latest series of articles that seemingly blame every single bad thing to have ever happened on global vaccine programs.

As the information continues to be stacked against them, I expect to see the likes of Olmsted, Stone, Taylor, Dachel, etc. to go completely down the rabbit-hole….which will only keep up the marginalization and push them so far outside the mainstream that they will enter Phelps territory.

@JP, loved the *fractally* part, quite apt.
But, we can follow through her (un)reasoning a bit.
“If science has been wrong”, why in the hell did she become a “science geek”? She’d be a “wrong” geek, in her world view.

Physics was moving from a philosophy into a hard science when Einstein shown a huge floodlight upon the entire field with mass/energy equivalence, new insights on gravitation, correcting a minor error in Sir Issac’s gravitational equation and relativistic time dilation.
The field was far from stagnant, but it moved ahead in a greater leap than before. Still, Einstein had major heartburn over quantum theory, the whole “spook action over distance” bit. So, confirmation bias on her part, her visionary had a major impediment to a theory that is practically utilized today in electronics, nuclear reactions (including reactor design and nuclear weapon design) and more.
The further compounds her errors in ignoring the fact that vaccine preventable disease deaths have shrunk until the populace has forgotten what those diseases did to society.
Trotted out is the hygiene nonsense, ignoring well established scientific observations.
Trotted out is the nutritional nonsense, ignoring well documented history.

When one tosses out every observation that discredits one’s theory, one has a large pile of facts in the bin and a steaming pile “proving” the theory.
Then, peers savage the poor study, leaving it in tatters, thoroughly discredited.
When one uses testimonials as evidence, one has nothing but an echo chamber where a bigger steaming pile is left to compost.

Well, at least no paper was wasted in printing out her steaming pile, the electrons can happily go about their business.
But, that was five minutes of my life I won’t have back after reading her missive of absurdities, tangled with misconceptions.

Interesting that Khun has shown up coming from the anti-vaccers. I was once presented with him as the reason to believe that all science is wrong and universal belief in god was just around the corner. Even my light skimming of his work seemed to indicate that both my example and the example in this post are given by people motivated to wish that reality was other than what it is.

[…] Insolence on the living embodiment of the Dunning-Kruger effect and the arrogance of ignorance, The Thinking Moms’ Revolution, but this time I must, because I’ve just seen there what is perhaps the most potently […]

Thanks for the good analysis of Thomas Kuhn’s work. I had to read that book in college 15 years ago. Kuhn’s book is about as accurate and useful as Marx’s historical materialism, Max Weber’s sociology, or Freud’s psychoanalysis. Interesting? Yes. Realistic? Nope.

other kinds of science are about proving people like Newton discovering the apple etc.

There is something called vaccine science and that is in a class all of its own. Lots of total believers, even when all the kids in the world are degenerating – when finally there are no adults – there will still be a corner of med school telling us “vaccines save lives”. Medical peer review is another broken banana, even when the authors are telling us it is total baloney, there will still be a corner of blogsphere thrashing his helmet over an old copy of pubmed, rocking backwards and forwards…………………….

Given that ‘peer review’ is essentially someone reading a paper and saying “Yes. This paper makes sense, given my knowledge of the way the world works”. I’m surprised that johnny is so against it. After all, how much alt med ‘evidence’ falls into this definition of ‘peer review’?

Vaccines are one of the fastest rising sectors in a hugely profitable industry. In fact, according to Marcia Angell, for over two decades the pharmaceutical industry has been far and away the most profitable in the United States.

Whoops.

And double whoops
(see p.91-92)

Boy, do I hate it when people really working against Big pharma are misused by anti-vaxxers who clearly think they are on their side…

There is something called vaccine science and that is in a class all of its own. Lots of total believers, even when all the kids in the world are degenerating – when finally there are no adults – there will still be a corner of med school telling us “vaccines save lives”. Medical peer review is another broken banana, even when the authors are telling us it is total baloney, there will still be a corner of blogsphere thrashing his helmet over an old copy of pubmed, rocking backwards and forwards

My autistic child is much better at telling reality from fantasy and has much better social skills than you, so who is the degenerate one?